The Department of Defense Contractors

[marmar]

from ourfuture.org:



The Department of Defense Contractors
By Armand Biroonak

February 20th, 2009 - 10:12am ET


The conservatives proclaiming now is a time of “fiscal responsibility” must have forgotten that they enacted tax cuts for the rich and spent $12 billion a month in Iraq. Now there is a growing right-wing movement to cut so-called “wasteful entitlement” programs such as Social Security as a means of balancing the budget. Meanwhile, make any attempt to cut defense spending and conservatives are ready to attack. Why are conservatives so hostile to cuts? Those lucrative defense contracts would be placed in jeopardy, of course.

Defense consumes more than one-third of all government expenditures. DOD’s expected expenditures in 2009 are $741 billion; include other affiliated agencies and operations this figure comes to nearly $1 trillion. Since 2001, defense spending has increased over 110 percent and is at its highest compared to any other period except World War II. This level of spending is astonishing, considering that the U.S. spends more on defense than the next 45 highest spending countries combined—including 5.8 times more than China (2nd highest), 10.2 times more than Russia (3rd highest), and 98.6 times more than Iran (22nd highest) – and will account for 48 percent of the world's total military spending.

Criticize this obscene level of funding and conservatives are armed with their empty rhetoric of “supporting the troops” and “protecting America.” In reality, the defense budget serves as a profit bonanza for defense contractors. Over the past eight years defense contractors have seen their profits soar to record levels, even amid the recession.

For instance, the Iraq War is the most privatized war this nation has seen, with nearly 20 percent of funding for operations—about $85 billion—going to private contractors such as Halliburton or Blackwater.

Our intelligence community is outsourced also, with 70 percent of the intelligence budget going to contractors. Moreover, funding does not even stay on American soil, approximately one-third of defense contracts for the Iraq and Afghan Wars have gone to foreign companies. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009020819/department-defense-contractors